August272017

Further cool fact that the linked article doesn’t mention: the books will be given away to visitors at the end of the installation, so this is not only displaying works that were banned, but also spreading them among a new audience.

Hey if anyone wants to donate to my cash.me or PayPal so I can afford to put my dog up with a proper sitter while I go to this conference for my job next week that would be great. Just need about $100. Thanks y'all!

August262017

“At the root, Autism Warrior Parents are those who, for whatever reason, refuse to accept their autistic child’s actual reality and needs, and instead put their energies into absolute change or control of that child.
AWP insistence on battling rather than comprehending autism derails both autism conversations and autistic lives. When AWPs focus on the “difficulty” of their children’s behaviors rather than on the reasons for those behaviors (usually sensory or processing triggers common to autistic people of all abilities), they reinforce unhelpful assumptions that autism is a mystery, and a horrible parental burden. The reality is that autistic people, like anyone else with a disability, function best when given appropriate accommodations.”

LMAOOO. All right Ima try and explain this succinctly as possible. Basically this random-ass ‘young adult’ book, ‘Handbook for Mortals,’ hit the NYT Bestseller List on the #1 Spot for the Hardcover Young Adult Category this morning. Only problem is that literally NO ONE had ever heard of this book before, like nada marketing, publicity, etc. Zilch. It was supposedly published by a company, GeekNation who only announced their publishing arm back in July.

To hit the Bestseller list, the book would have had to sold at least 5,000~ copies within the first week, but a few people were quick to point out a major discrepancy where the book was literally out of stock everywhere in all major retailers, like legit you couldn’t find it on B&N, Amazon, and so on.

YA Twitter basically crowd-sourced an investigation where a few anonymous booksellers revealed that they had gotten calls first asking if they were NYT-reporting bookstores, and then received bulk orders of the book but not caring when the books arrived. Soooo essentially what happened was that this book scammed it’s way on to the top of the NYT Bestseller List by figuring out which bookstores reported sales to the NYT (to determine what hits the bestsellers list, the NYT’s methodology takes a sample from various bookstores, and this supposedly changes every week). They then ordered thousands of copies of the book from those stores and only those stores - and by doing so, this was all a scheme in the hopes of driving the book to the top of the bestseller list.

The main impetus for hitting the bestseller list was for getting a better chance to have a movie adaptation of the book made with a label like ‘#1 NYT Bestselling Book!’ which would have made it more appealing to potential investors. Butttt all of this was discovered and the NYT sent out a revision where they removed the book on the list a few hours ago.

Someone also compared an excerpt of the book to an excerpt from ‘My Immortal,’ so now there’s a conspiracy theory that the author, Lani Sarem, is actually the author behind that fanfic. She’s also a former music manager who worked with bands like Blues Traveler, and the official Blues Traveler account weighed in and claimed that she was fired for ‘pulling these kind of stunts.’

This doesn’t even cover half the craziness. Some of my other favorite parts:

- The cover wasn’t even revealed until the beginning of August

- The ONLY chatter on Twitter before this was a little blog tour they’d put together, but nothing else

- The distribution company behind this is the same people who distributed Milo Yadablahblah

- Whoever was behind this knew August was the best time to push a book onto the list (as opposed to September, which is bananas)

- Whoever was behind this knew the EXACTLY how many books to order form each store (the number that alerts NYT to start giving you a hard time is like 80 books at indies, so they went around and ordered 79 each.)

- But they were dumb enough to wildly over-order (they ordered over 18,000, over double what it would’ve taken)

- Also dumb enough to straight-up tell the booksellers “This is for an event but it’s okay if it doesn’t arrive”

- The book only has ONE blurb. One.

- No trade reviews. No blurbs from other authors within the community

- The ONE blurb is from an “international bestselling author”

- No. She’s a self-pub romance author who’s besties with LS

- You find all that out in the foreword (who puts a foreword on a YA novel???)

- Also the main character is 25 and there isn’t a single teen in this supposed YA novel

- Also also the cover may have been plagiarized

- Also also also the book knocked The Hate U Give to #2 and Everything, Everything off the list entirely, so people were maaaaaaaad

- And finally, when confronted with all this, the author tried to pull a “#KeepYAKind uwu” in her response to PW.

White women can literally scam/lie/brown nose/cry/beg/bully their way into any fucking thing I’m screaming

So this post is really hard for me to make, but I feel I must be brave. Not only for myself but for others like myself. This morning I was assaulted by a client. Actually it was two men claiming to want my services. It’s no secret I’m a sex worker. I won’t go into details. But I managed to fight them both off and escape pretty much unscathed. I’m still shook up. I’ve reported the incident. Just know I’m safe and I’m ok. As for my sex worker friends. There is a white supremacist rally this weekend here in SF. Please be cautious and do what you must to insure your safety. I’m very lucky it wasn’t any worse than it was. I’m a big guy but that doesn’t mean anything when it comes to these situations. You have to be careful, lesson learned. I guess they didn’t expect this queer to be able to fight back.”

“So many people ignore their grandpa as he complains about “foreigners” at the dinner table, or their best friend from high school ranting about Black Lives Matter on Facebook, because they can go to sleep at night with a comfortable thought:

At least I don’t believe that. At least I’m not like them.

White people can disagree with the racist comments of certain friends. And they can feel good about themselves for having so-called liberal, accepting opinions. But then… what? What actually changes? How do their politics actually help anyone? Perhaps the most insidious thing about casual racism is that there is nothing actually casual about it. When it goes unchecked, it only gets worse.

The problem with continuing to be friends with people who hold racist beliefs, however benign they may seem, isn’t the actual friendship itself. It’s human to want to remain close to someone who you love, someone who has perhaps been in your life for a very long time. The problem is the silence. Silence is complicity. That’s something every white person who feels that they are against racism should consider whenever a friend or family member says something racist and they don’t challenge it. If you’re really against racism, if you really cared enough about stopping the spread of racism, how can you be complacent?”

I won’t speak for all liberals, but I’d like to see a future where it isn’t a big deal for a woman in full modesty garb to sit next to a drag queen in NYC. It’s become a bit of a sensation, but her and I were just existing. The freedom to simply be yourself in a sea of people who aren’t like you is a freedom we all deserve.

The central irony is that this isn’t some hypothetical future–it’s just present day reality. This is a picture of two ordinary people going about their normal lives despite how haters want to politicize it lmao. So the underlying message is not “future liberals want” it’s “people conservatives want to eradicate”

taylor swift trying to figure out how to incorporate entry-level feminist rhetoric into her lyrics without alienating her right-wing fanbase who make up half her sales and also trying to figure out how to merge her innocent and virginal country-pop white girl image with the instagram baddie aesthetic she’s trying to steal from black and brown women

i can’t believe people will insist that genitals = gender while still being so quick to assign genders to things including but not limited to: robots, candy, umbrellas, and geological features. why are you more willing to call an m&m female than you are a trans woman